Blown Like Leaves In The Wind
by Embersprite
Summary: What if John found out that Sherlock was alive early on and came to his own heartbreaking conclusions as to what was going on? What if, years later, Sherlock comes home to a London that John vanished from without a trace? Will contain Slash of the Johnlock variety and a fair amount of angst.
1. Chapter 1

So this is how the world ends, he thought peering heartbrokenly through the tiny window carefully not allowing himself to move or draw attention to himself.

It had been two months since Sherlock's death and John was only just beginning to sift through some of his things, if only to return the stuff that Sherlock had stolen from Scotland Yard and the hospital.

He had separated the purloined goods into two piles. One pile was for Lestrade. It mostly contained old evidence and a rather amusing pile of twenty seven stolen police badges. Some people collect stamps; Sherlock, apparently, collected stolen police badges. The second, significantly larger, pile was mostly equipment stolen from Molly's lab. As a doctor John knew exactly how expensive that stuff could be and was resolved to return it to Molly as soon as possible. The only problem with that plan was that John could not bring himself to return to St. Bart's. Too many memories of his best friend jumping to his death.

But John was nothing if not resourceful and as such had thought up a way around this little dilemma. He would simply bundle it all up and lug it off to Molly's flat. The sooner the better; he wanted to get this over with.

That was how John had found himself on the other side of London carrying a medium sized box full of hospital equipment and carefully stepping up the steps to Molly's front door. He had been just about to knock when a small movement in the window had caught his eye. All it took was a single glance through a rather dirty window to break his heart into pieces.

Sitting on the sofa in the living room was Molly sleeping entangled comfortably in the arms of an equally sleeping Sherlock Holmes.

The world stopped.

Breath Watson, he told himself, breath.

This was how the world ends.

As quietly as he could John backed away from the house. Making his way back to the main street so he could summon a taxi John refused to think upon what he had seen.

Avoiding CCTV cameras was second nature by now, he had been avoiding them for two months now. It seemed as if every time he accidently passed one he would be kidnapped by a very sympathetic Mycroft. John had hated it. Now he knew that the patronizing git had just been mocking the poor ignorant army doctor.

Okay, so maybe he was just a little bit bitter.

But, John thought while opening the door to 221 Baker Street, didn't he have the right to be? Here he was mourning the death of his best friend only to find out that said "friend" is not dead at all but happily shacking up with Molly Hooper.

Which meant that not only had John been betrayed by Mycroft, which admittedly was not all that surprising, but also by Molly whom he had also come to consider as a friend. And Sherlock. Sherlock who obviously didn't care about John at all. Sherlock who didn't care that John had so obviously fallen apart when he had died. Sherlock who… who had probably deduced that John had fallen in love with him, and been so repulsed by the idea he had faked his own death to escape it.

Sherlock must have figured it out and run. Right into the loving arms of the girl that had been obsessed with him for years.

His stomach heaved. Dropping the box of lab equipment onto the floor, uncaring that he could hear the distinct sound of glass breaking, John stumbled over to his chair and doubled over in pain. How could this happen? How could John know what the truth really was? How could John have so foolishly trusted so many people that seemed quite happy to see him in pain?

He had talked to Molly just the day before! He had cried in front of her and talked about how much he missed Sherlock. And she had been sweet and sympathetic. Of _course_ she had been.

Who else knew? How many of John's friends had been in on this. How many people that John had trusted so stupidly, so blindly had been hiding this from him the whole time? And why had they done it. Suddenly feeling ridiculously paranoid he glanced wildly around the room. He knew that Mycroft had bugged the flat before, where they still there was John being watched right now as he broke down in his sitting room? He shuddered at the thought.

John couldn't stop the tears that came to his eyes. He didn't even try to stop the painful gasping sobs that tore their way from his throat.

This was how the world ends. John's world. Not, as he had always secretly believed, on the wrong end of a gun, or in a hospital bed from some strange incurable illness picked up from a patient, but at the cold uncaring hands of the sociopath John had so foolishly allowed himself to love. This was how John's world ended, alone, betrayed and heartbroken.

It didn't matter, he decided, not at all. It didn't matter when every time he closed his eyes he saw the man he was so desperately in love with snuggled up in Molly's arms. It didn't matter when he clearly had no true friends. It didn't matter when he couldn't stay here for one more day knowing now what he did. Not here in Baker Street, or London. In fact, he decided, maybe he should ditch England entirely. He wouldn't put it past Mycroft to track him down if he stayed. He absolutely couldn't stay.

But how does one hide from the British Government while still being able to live a proper life? John wasn't sure but he knew that he had to try. If Sherlock could disappear then so could John. He left his cell phone sitting on the coffee table; he wouldn't need it where he was going and it would seem that he had nobody to stay in touch with anyway.

With that decided John grabbed his wallet, his keys and his browning and walked resolutely out the door for what he knew would be the last time.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or i would have a lot more money than I do now.

* * *

After leaving Baker Street John knew that he didn't have much time. He would only have a few days before Sarah began investigating why he had stopped coming to work, and there was a lot that he had to accomplish if he was going to pull of this little disappearing act.

First of all unlike Sherlock John wasn't a heartless bastard. He knew that he couldn't just disappear and not let the only person in his life that he still trusted know what was going on. Harry may be an alcoholic but she was John's only family and no matter how bad things got between them the Watson siblings were nothing if not loyal.

John wondered now if that was a bad thing. Look where his loyalty had led him.

But he couldn't think about that now.

Hailing the first cab he came across John gave the driver Harry's address and sat back to have a good long think.

John had always been a planner. Planning ahead had gotten him through both medical school and the war unscathed, well relatively speaking anyway, and he was determined to have a plan of action firmly in mind before he arrived at Harry's house. It was just under an hour and a half drive, so John would use this time to plan.

He had several geniuses to out think.

Looking out the window at the passing scenery John had a fabulous idea. He knew just what he had to do. The only question remaining was the extent Harry would play in this little game.

* * *

"So the bastard has been alive all along?" Harry said incredulously pulling her legs up crosswise onto the couch cushions. "And he couldn't be bothered to tell you?"

"That's right, but Harry, its worse than that. So much worse…" John began.

"You are finally admitting that you're in love with him." Harry finished for him.

John took a trembling breath in before answering. "I feel so betrayed. I would have done _anything_ for that man, and he just threw it away. And he deliberately did it in the most horrible way that he could. Harry, he made me watch him _die_. He deliberately went out of his way to hurt me as much as he could. And now he is having my friends hide it from me. Lie to my face! And _they are doing it._ But… they were his friends long before they met me."

"And to find him in the arms of someone else…" Harry started, But John cut her off.

"No! No I can't, I really can't talk about that. It's the only part of this that I can almost accept. He has every right to be with whomever he pleases. He made it clear from the day we met that he wasn't interested in me. It isn't any of my business."

The look he got from this made it clear that his sister wasn't buying it but was willing to let it slide, at least for the moment.

"So, what are you going to do?" She asked.

This was the part that John had been dreading. How could he make her understand his need to flee? How could he possibly explain why he had to go, why putting as much distance between himself and this entire mess was crucial to his very survival? 

**"**John? John what are you going to do? What are you planning? I know that face John, I know you. " Harry said.

Her voice was getting slightly frantic; he had better answer before she resorted to hitting him with pillows.

"I'm leaving." He said stoically.

Harry was clearly less than thrilled with this non- answer and clutched the beige pillow in her hands tighter, a little more threatening. "Leaving… leaving to where? John the last time you told me that you were leaving you went off and got shot in Afghanistan! Where the hell are you going now? "

"Africa." John cautiously responded, carefully keeping one eye on the fluffy projectile in her hands. "I'm joining 'Doctors Without Borders'. Do you remember Reggie? My surgeon buddy that was stationed with me in Korea? He joined after he was discharged two years ago and has been trying to get me to go help him for a while now. He could help me get in and then help the system… _lose_ my paperwork. I would be a proper doctor again." He finished wistfully.

Sitting further back on her couch, Harry Watson absorbed both what her brother had said and what he hadn't.

Harry wasn't blind, she had her problems but she had always been very good with people and she could read her brother better than anybody on the planet. John wasn't just hurt, he was scared. That bastard psychopath had Harry's baby brother so afraid that he was sitting here planning on fleeing the same country that he had once taken so much pride in protecting. The question was what he was so very frightened of.

Leaning forward to put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands she contemplated her brother's face. Tired, far more tired than it had any right to be. Even two solid months of mourning shouldn't have aged his eyes this much. She took in his drooping shoulders, sagging in defeat, his trembling lips, his pain written all over his body, practically screaming out at anybody who knew him. Harry had never wanted to kill anybody before but she would cheerfully beat Sherlock Holmes do death if she ever saw him. How dare he do this to someone as kind as John; to someone who had done so much for him?

And there was her answer.

"You're afraid that you'll forgive him if you see him again. And he doesn't deserve forgiveness." She said.

John jerked back sharply, as if she had punched him in the face. From the look in his eyes it might have been kinder if she had. He looked so defeated.

Nodding slowly, reluctantly, John acknowledged her.

"If he came to me right now and told me that this whole thing was some sort of experiment and that it was over and time to go home… I might go. And I would never forgive myself for it."

He would never have admitted that to anybody else.

"I have to go Harry, I need to." He said slightly desperately. "And…" He trailed off.

"And?" Harry prodded softly.

"I don't think that I'm going to come back. If I do it won't be for a very long time. I need to forget him Harry. " He finished.

"What do you need me to do?" She asked.

"I need you to pretend that I never came to see you." He answered.

* * *

It had taken several more hours of convincing and explaining before John had Harry entirely on board with his plot, but once he had managed it she was surprisingly helpful. She seemed to be doing it under the impression that he would change his mind soon enough and come home when he had calmed down. She thought he just needed time and space and that it was her duty as his older sister to make sure that he got it. He did nothing to dissuade her views. It helped that Harry had always loved spy movies and liked the idea of helping her brother become an undercover doctor.

So here he was four weeks later on his way to South Africa to begin his new life as a doctor without borders treating HIV/AIDS patients that had contracted cryptococcal meningitis.

Reggie had been thrilled and surprisingly understanding when John had contacted him from his new prepaid cell phone. It had been rather easy to get John into the program with his background, and even easier to have the system lose his records. As far as the computers were concerned John Watson had joined the organization more than ten years ago and good luck telling them differently. John and Reggie had buried anything related to John so deep that it would take a team of archaeologists to dig them out again.

Sitting on a tiny plane and flipping through language books John couldn't help but think that yes his old life, his old world had ended. But now he had the chance to begin a new life in a new frontier. And he could live with that.


	3. Chapter 3

An: i warn you that I wrote this while i was half asleep so it might be awful. Also Doctors Without Borders is awesome but I have no real idea how it works so... ahem please don't be offended if it is in no way accurate.

I still don't own Sherlock, but I'm working on it.

* * *

John knew that he wasn't really dealing with his feelings of betrayal and heartbreak. He knew that pushing it to the back of his mind and ignoring it wasn't healthy. He knew that pretending that nothing was wrong and that he wasn't dying inside was not only self destructive but cowardly.

But healing takes time, hurting took time, and for the love of god angsting like a bloody emo teenage girl took _time. _And John didn't have time, which was just how he wanted it.

Instead of whining about how horrible the world was John was saving lives. In all honesty he had never even considered the medical state of affairs that the world dealt with overseas. It was embarrassing, was he really that blind to everything that went on outside of his immediate frame of reference? What had happened to his drive to help others? What had happened to the goals that he had made to himself, fresh faced and triumphant, with a shiny new medical degree clutched in his hands? He had wanted to save the world, or at least some small part of it. Had the military really changed him that much? Had Sherlock? Sure he had helped in the war, and yeah he had sort of helped save people with his ex best friend, but he hadn't put himself through medical school by himself to shoot people, he had gone to learn how to heal. It was his passion, it was his life.

And if he felt that hollow ache in his chest of something missing he thankfully didn't have time to ponder what it was.

There really was no time.

It didn't take long for John to get sucked into the day to day going ons of the rather primitive clinic he was stationed in. It was appalling really how many cases he had every day. He had known intellectually that HIV and AIDS were rampant in South Africa but being there, seeing the faces come and go, learning his patient's names and often, far too often, being the only one who cared when they died was rattling. His hand hadn't so much as twitched in months; in fact John had actually been able to do surgeries again. Even Sherlock hadn't been able to do that for him.

The primary focus of John's little clinic was not HIV or AIDS specifically though but the debilitating secondary infections that those with compromised immune systems couldn't fight off. The worst, in John's opinion, was Cryptococcal Meningitis, a devastatingly nasty disease caused by the fungus found in the local soil.

John had spent many horrible days surrounded bu the suffering. Constantly surrounded bu the high pitched fever induced screams, the wild mental fluctuations, and the high death rate of those afflicted, John sometimes wondered if they were accomplishing anything at all.

It was always later, when he was bent over stacks of paperwork to send to the labs for CD4 tests and processing teetering piles of dipsticks (the new tests, rather like pregnancy tests, for meningitis that had thankfully taken the place of lumbar punctures.) or filling out order form after order form pleading for more medicine because they seemed to be constantly running out of fluconazole (the primary treatment that they _had to have_) that John was able to sit back and be amazed at what they were doing. It was empowering.

Somewhere back in London he had lost his way while he was madly chasing the coattails of the genius that had saved and then destroyed him.

He was walking through lines of beds passing out little paper cups full of pills when he came to the startling revelation that he had been in South Africa for more than a year. Where had the time gone? It always seemed to be slipping away from him these days.

He wondered how Harry was doing; he had only been able to call her twice since he had left. He wondered briefly how Mrs. Hudson was doing, he did feel a little guilty having disappeared on her but it had to be done. He only spared a brief thought toward Lestrade mostly wondering what he had thought of John's missing person report, there had to have been one.

He would never admit to wondering how Sherlock was. He didn't have time to wonder about _him_.

John simply didn't have the time to agonize.

He worked damn hard to be sure of it.

* * *

Mycroft Holmes was a very busy man. And to his dismay he seemed to be getting busier by the day.

In between running the country, running after his little brother, and juggling the catastrophe his stupid little brother had left behind when he had decided to make like a dog and play dead he never seemed to have enough time in the day. Not even the British Government could make the clock go slower or alter how quickly the earth revolved around the sun. So it could be understood if on one day for only a few hours his attention hadn't been where it maybe should have been.

The day that John Watson had disappeared had been a nightmare, and that was _before_ anybody had known that the man had vanished. Not only had there been a security breech on some of the intelligence gathered on Moriarty's web, some idiotic terrorists had decided to make threats against the queen. It was also the day that Sherlock had finally left the country.

So yes, it was understandable that his focus was not directly on one rather boring ex army doctor who had a permanent address and a steady job. Understandable… but still potentially disastrous because Mycroft's destructive baby brother had all but begged him to keep the dowdy man safe.

Mycroft had promised.

It wasn't that Mycroft didn't like John Watson; it was that he always seemed to do the unexpected. He didn't take bribe money when he clearly needed it, he didn't run from danger like a normal person, he didn't run screaming when he had encountered some of Sherlock's quirkier quirks, and he _cared._ About everyone, but more specifically he cared about Sherlock. Which made Mycroft like him, because John Watson seemed to be able to do what Mycroft couldn't namely he somehow managed to get Sherlock to take better care of himself.

Since the two had moved in together Mycroft had sat back (way back… like behind a computer hooked up to cameras back) and watched as the alarming grey color in Sherlock's skin had disappeared as John convinced him to eat more regularly. He had watched as the doctor had convinced Sherlock to let him treat his wounds when he refused to go to the hospital. Mycroft's favorite change was the fact that Sherlock had thrown away his "secret emergency stash" of seven percent cocaine solution that Mycroft hadn't even known was there after a particularly flattering remark made by the little man (Not that John knew that it happened). Mycroft really couldn't understand how someone as observant as Sherlock was never noticed that his roommate had fallen in love with him. It was absolutely unforgivable in a Holmes, and Mycroft had made a note to poke fun at Sherlock for it someday.

Even Mummy liked John even though she had never met him. She was of the opinion that god had sent John to Sherlock as an answer to her prayers.

Mummy was charmingly religious that way, it always make her very literal minded children laugh.

So the fact that John was missing had Mycroft very very nervous.

For the first month or so Sherlock had "died" Mycroft had kept a very close eye on John. He had been so devastated that Mycroft had actually felt _guilty _for lying to him. But as time had passed John had begun to avoid all interactions with Mycroft. He had developed the annoying ability of being able to avoid nearly all of Mycroft's cameras. The better John got at hiding the harder it became to track him down and Mycroft simply didn't have the time to play hide and go seek with a grown man who clearly didn't want to see him.

After all he was a busy man.

It had been Gregory Lestrade that had brought John's disappearance to his attention. He had seen the missing person report put in by Sarah Sawyer and had wanted to know if he had anything to do with it.

He hadn't.

Obviously.

After having his minions pour over two weeks of CCTV footage they found that John had gotten into a cab at 6:37 pm on September twenty sixth going in the direction of his sister's house. The cameras had lost sight of the cab just over half an hour into the drive. When questioned a drunken and hysterical Harriet Watson had claimed that John had not shown up and that she hadn't even known he was coming. John's phone (In which Mycroft had an advanced tracking device implanted.) had been found intact in Baker Street; its call history was clean. None of his personal belongings had been tampered with and there had been no sign of forced entry.

Mycroft prayed to a god he didn't believe in that John Watson had not been kidnapped by any of the plethora of enemies he had made in his time living with Sherlock. But as the days turned into months and a year went by with no word and no trace Mycroft had developed a new worry. What if John was dead? What if Sherlock (who Mycroft had neglected to mention John's disappearance to for fear of him doing something stupid.) came home and there was no John waiting for him for better or worse. Probably worse considering all the lies but that was neither here nor there if he want here or there at all.

At any rate Mycroft kept a team on the disappearance constantly but after the first few months his personal involvement had dwindled down to nearly nothing.

What with gathering evidence to prove Sherlock's innocence, providing his brother necessities, and running the country he had enough on his plate without chasing after John.

Mycroft Holmes was a very busy man, and he simply didn't have the time.

* * *

Deciding to kill himself was probably the most difficult thing that Sherlock Holmes had ever had to do because for the first time in his life he genuinely felt as if he had something to lose.

He wasn't certain how it happened but somehow he had built a life for himself at Baker Street with his not a housekeeper and his skull and his smiley face and most importantly his friend.

And he liked his life.

So it had been a difficult decision to throw it all away and die.

He knew in his (tiny cold grey) heart that he had done the right thing. James Moriarty had to die and his web of nastiness needed to go as well. The only person who could do that was Sherlock.

In the beginning he had wanted John to go with him, he always seemed to work better if John was there with him, but the idea was quickly discarded. Sherlock needed John to be safe, he needed John. He wasn't sure exactly where that idea came from as John was quite capable of taking care of himself but the thought had lodged itself in Sherlock's brain and refused to let go. Thankfully there was a good logical reason for John to stay behind. If they both disappeared even _Anderson_ would had been able to spot something was up.

And that would not only be counterproductive but also humiliating.

It was the same reason Sherlock could not tell John he was really alive. John needed to be act as if Sherlock was dead if anybody else was going to believe it. And John could not act… at all. John's attempts at acting always left Sherlock torn between laughing and cringing in disgust. It really was that bad.

So John couldn't know.

It wasn't until two months after the incident that Sherlock actually began to regret how he had gone about things though.

He had been staying with Molly Hooper (and wasn't _that_ a horrible experience, she couldn't even make tea like John could no matter how many time Sherlock may her try and re-try) and not only had he had to put up with her fawning but also her guilt trips.

The day before he left for Germany she had come to him bawling because she had been to see John. When she had told Sherlock how miserable John was and how much he had said he _missed him_ (nobody had ever liked him enough to miss him, it was decidedly strange) and that he had _cried_ well… Sherlock had fallen apart… a bit.

Alright so he had bawled like he hadn't since he was six years old and his cat Mr. Flufums had been hit by a car.

But anyway he had humiliated himself by crying in front of someone that he had only passing respect for and then promptly made it worse by _hugging_ her (shudder) and falling asleep with her on the couch. When he had woken up to leave three hours later she had tried (to his horror) to kiss him. It was all he could do not to vomit on her.

He had made it very clear to her afterwards that he was in no way shape of form attracted to her.

It hadn't gone well.

But Sherlock was married to his work; and he really didn't fell like being unfaithful.

Now he was in Siberia and freezing is nits off while rounding up the last of Moriarty's drug ring there. Really… Siberia. Sherlock couldn't help but feel that it had been set up there solely to piss him off, Siberia really was that bad.

Mycroft had been keeping Sherlock up to date on any intelligence that he needed and sending him all of the supplies he needed but Sherlock couldn't help but feel that he was hiding something important from him. It had to be pretty bad to get Mycroft so uncomfortable, in the three times he had seen his brother in the year since he had left Mycroft hadn't eaten any cake in front of him once.

It couldn't be that bad though surely, if it was he would have been told.

Unfortunately he couldn't deduce what was keeping Mycroft so uppity right now. He had criminals to catch after all.

There was still so much to do.

Sherlock wasn't sure why but he had the nagging feeling that he was running out of time.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: I really want to thank all of my amazing reviewers for their kind words, some of you have actually, all unknowing I'm sure, cemented a good half of the stories plot in my mind. Thank you very much :D

Fro the record I still know nothing of how DWB actually functions or any of the other organizations for that matter, maybe they don't ever work together at all? But I have immense respect for what they do regardless. Also I only know what I found on Google about the illnesses.

_Sendi_ mentioned in a review that the tension keeps building. Yup (grin) It will go on for a bit longer to so... I hope you can hang in with it I'm not being very nice to John and Sherlock at all just yet. It will get worse before it gets better. Thanks for your kind regard though.

As always I do not own Sherlock.

* * *

Eighteen months after arriving in South Africa found John once more boarding a tiny rickety plane to lands unknown. Well relatively unknown, John had never been there anyway and in all honesty he, once more, knew next to nothing about the place.

But he was needed.

Nigeria had one of the least efficient health care systems that John had ever heard of; combined that with the general poverty level of the country and you had a biological recipe for disaster. To compound the problem you had to take into account how remote a good deal of the little villages in the country really were, as a city boy John was aware that he was in for one hell of a steep learning curve.

Even so he had never dreamed that he would actually be faced with treating and immunizing against Polio. There hadn't been a case in the United Kingdom since 1982.

For John the idea was rather like walking down to Hyde Park and being eaten by a dinosaur. Horrible... but also bewildering.

He did of course study it _idea_ of Polio extensively while in medical school, the creation of the Polio vaccine was a large milestone in modern medicine.

The disease rather reminded John of the taxi cab killer in A Study In Pink. It was always lurking around but very seldom was it seen. Ninety nine percent of people who caught it never showed a single symptom; so it seemed to pop up out of nowhere and was next to impossible to track. Anyone could be in the presence of a killer and never know it.

The World Health Assembly had been trying to eradicate it for years, and they were doing a very good job of it. It was difficult though because you had to make sure that every single person had the vaccine.

A single missed case could lead to thousands.

So when twelve cases where reported in a small remote village in Nigeria it was considered a global crisis and it was all hands on deck. John would be joining dozens of people from all over the world from Doctors Without Borders, The WHO, and representatives from the World Health Assembly. With any luck it would be one more nail in the coffin for Polio and one more step towards the conclusion of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

John would be just one more person knocking on doors and setting up clinics trying to be certain that every single person received a vaccine. Thankfully the ringing system of circling the disease with vaccinated people and working their way outwards had been perfected during the global smallpox eradication years before.

John felt rather guilty that he was looking forward to seeing his first ever iron lung. But seriously it was an _iron lung _and he was going to be helping his patients _use it._ It was trippy.

Being excited about seeing sick children was a bit not good John decided absently

Even so… _iron lung! _He thought with a grin.

Glancing at his watch he was surprised to see how much time had passed; had three hours really passed without his knowing it?

Not long later the crackly intercom announced that they would be landing in five minutes.

* * *

John had worked on the Polio case for just over six months before transferring to the Tuberculosis Division fifty miles away from his original starting point in Nigeria.

After the relatively tame, there had only been twenty three confirmed cases but lots of administering medicine to anybody with a pulse, Polio work he had done the Tuberculoses victims caught him completely off guard.

Parallel lines of beds stretched in front of him like something out of an apocalypse movie. The people in them were so sick, so alarmingly miserable that John was momentarily stunned that he had been so upset by the Meningitis.

But that wasn't really fair to himself, he decided. Meningitis had been bad enough to be getting on with, but this… he wouldn't have been able to imagine this if it had been described to him.

People were skeletal, shivering, hacking up blood.

When he had walked in for the first time he had stopped in the doorway and just stared.

The American doctor that was showing him the ropes had, thankfully, been very understanding.

"I threw up the first time I walked in here." Dr. Ramose had said with a dry laugh. "It's like something out of a nightmare."

John and several other of the DWB had joined up with a large group of American doctors sent by the USAID for the TB DOTS program that had been set up there in 2009.

They were a cheery lot for the most part. It helped that it was all volunteer workers, they all had personally compelling reasons to be there and a drive to help that may not have been there if they had been forced to be there by work obligations.

The work was fast paced and demanding. The turnover of the patients was so swift that John often only saw any given patient once.

It was a good thing though. John's Post Traumatic Stress had taken a turn that he would have happily lived without.

Nightmares of Afghanistan were mostly a thing of the past. Instead of reliving being shot in the shoulder he had begun dreaming of swimming pools and explosives. He dreamed of shooting taxi drivers and being kidnapped by Chinese circus performers. He dreamed of Detective Inspector Lestrade's concerned oftentimes exasperated voice, of Anderson and Donavan's insults, cold and bloody murder victims, and erotic breathy ringtones. He dreamed of phone calls and kidnap victims.

The worst nightmares though were a little different. John would see Sherlock; beautiful brilliant Sherlock excitedly deducing crime scenes while exclaiming about it being like Christmas. He would see Sherlock, eyes unusually warm, asking if John was alright while throwing a semtex jacket across the room. He would relive dinners at Angelo's with its amazing food and romantic candles that always found their way to the table.

He would see Sherlock, insubstantial and evanescent, disappearing towards Molly Hooper's laughter while being unable to follow, no matter how desperately he tried.

It had been more than two and a half years now since he had left England. Shouldn't he have moved past this by now? Shouldn't he have at least _begun_ to move on? It honestly didn't feel as if he was any less in love with Sherlock now then he had ever been.

This wasn't to say that he hadn't come to have a clearer and more realistic opinion of some things. Time and space had, at the very least, given him the gift of perspective.

John no longer labored under the impression that Mycroft had been being deliberately cruel when "checking up on him". It was, in hindsight, rather kind and even flattering that someone as important as Mycroft had taken the time out of his meetings with the Queen and his job of practically running the country to care how one insignificant ex army doctor was doing even if he was lying to him and passively helping cause the pain. Somewhere along the way John had realized he genuinely liked Mycroft. When had John begun to consider the creepy kidnapping stalker a friend? It was difficult to find a man who clung to an umbrella like a child with a blanket and had a cake fetish threatening or, really, anything but vaguely amusing.

He also acknowledged that several of his friends had probably not had anything to do with it, such as Sarah, Greg, and Mrs. Hudson, and John had disappeared on them as if they didn't matter. He wondered if that made him no better than Sherlock in the end.

He wondered if he should at the very least let them know that he was alive.

But the more time passed the harder doing so seemed to become.

And the sting of Molly and Sherlock's betrayal was, even now, still so raw. Still too close to his heart.

They probably hardly thought about him at all by now anyway. He doubted that anybody even really cared that he was gone by now. They all had their own lives to live and John wasn't all that important to anybody. Right?

* * *

Sherlock had been moving from country to country for so long that he almost couldn't remember what it was like to stay in one place. What it was like to have a home and a bed and a friend to go back to at the end of the day.

This wasn't to say that Sherlock had forgotten Baker Street, or John. He desperately missed his skull, his oldest and at one time dearest companion. He missed rambling deductions off to it and having it grin coldly back in approval. He missed tea a rather lot as well. He hadn't had a proper cup of tea since he had jumped off of that thrice damned building. Was John Watson the only person left of the planet that knew how to properly boil tea leaves?

And his coat! It had been nearly a year since Sherlock had tracked down that stupid sniper (the one that had been trained on Mrs. Hudson.) and watched in fury as the bastard had burned down Sherlock's hotel room.

The man had recognized Sherlock and tried to kill him. Apparently he had thought Sherlock was inside the room when he had set it on fire.

Instead he had burned down a mostly empty room that had contained forty thousand francs, three guns, and Sherlock's beloved greatcoat.

_That _sniper's death had been particularly gruesome. Mycroft's men had had to clean his remains up with mops.

Sherlock wasn't sorry at all.

But more than his skull, his coat, and all the tea in the world Sherlock missed John.

Sentiment, Sherlock thought, was a horrible illness. It clung to Sherlock like slick black oil clogging up his mind, making his skin itch, and coating his heart (and when did _that _ridiculous organ decide to make its 35 year late appearance?) so that Sherlock couldn't go a day, and often not even an hour, without thinking about John. He wondered if John was healthy, if he was happy, if he had a girlfriend now that Sherlock wasn't there to drive them all off, if Mycroft was driving him insane breathing down his neck like he had _better_ be doing.

He wondered if he still missed Sherlock, if he thought about Sherlock at all. It had been two years and nine months since Sherlock had "died". Thirty three months twelve days nine hours thirty seven minutes and fourteen seconds since Sherlock had so dramatically left his life.

Not that Sherlock had been counting.

Nope, not at all.

But surly that was more than long enough for someone normal to forget all about someone else?

Sherlock was embarrassed to admit, if only to himself, that part of the reason he had Mycroft bothering John so often was so that John would not stop thinking about him. So that he wouldn't forget.

Not that John would, Sherlock decided. John was all about pointless sentiment.

How humiliating that Sherlock was so grateful for the fact.

But what else could he do? He had been gone from John's life longer now than he had been in it.

The fact that Sherlock was still calling out to John when he was in a hurry that they were going to be late could be ignored, he decided. The fact that Sherlock was still constantly spinning around to address John when he was excited, and would glance up in hopes of seeing John's impressed approving smile when Sherlock had unraveled a particularly tricky park of Moriarty's trail wasn't even worth acknowledging.

The fact that Sherlock's long overdue heart was behaving strangely at the very thought of John, fluttering alarmingly, and occasionally skipping entire beats, meant nothing.

The strange dreams that he had been having but not really remembering left him flushed and breathless.

Strange dreams, hot flashes, shortness of breath, and arrhythmia. It couldn't be good.

Was he ill? Should he give in and see a doctor?

Was he dying?

He had been in some pretty disgusting places and around some really nasty people. He could have picked up anything anywhere! Where was John? He should be here as Sherlock's doctor! Sherlock didn't want to die confused, alone, and Johnless!

Thankfully after Sherlock was finished here in Ethiopia he would be heading back to England.

Moriarty's Ethiopian sect was enough to turn even Sherlock's stomach of steel. Human trafficking was a disgusting practice. Especially when they were collecting and selling children. Not just Ethiopian children though, they would bring children from all over the world here for "training" and "processing". Some of the children were captured run aways, or sold by unscrupulous family members for cash. Most of the children were kidnapped right out of their own beds, or yards, or parks. Sherlock had seen some of the tiny terrified faces and he was determined to free them and make the perpetrators pay dearly.

So his illness would have to wait a while longer.

After he was finished here Sherlock had only one more target. Sebastian Moran, the sniper that to this day was supposedly trained on John, was as wily as he was dangerous. While not as intelligent as James Moriarty, Moran had been his favorite for a reason. Highly trained and even more highly loyal Moran was a dangerous adversary. All of Sherlock's and Mycroft's resources together were failing to pin him down. Every time Sherlock got close Moran slipped through his fingers like water.

It was decided, after a great many arguments (Sherlock for and Mycroft for some reason very much against) that Sherlock would come home. He would have his name cleared and return to Baker Street. Hopefully it would be enough to draw the sniper out of hiding.

Of course it would only work if John didn't kill Sherlock himself and allowed him to, at the very least temporarily, come back home and into his life.

But of course he would, he was sweet forgiving John Watson, Sherlock's best and only friend. It would be hard but John would listen and understand. After he broke Sherlock's nose.

Sherlock allowed himself to smile; he was going home to John. Soon.

His heart fluttered and stuttered.

Frowning now he rubbed his chest in irritation.

He really would have to have that looked at.


	5. Chapter 5

I'M BACK! Sorry for the long wait and this disappointing chapter, but being a full time student and a full time mother gets in the way of all else I'm afraid. Know that this story may take a while at times but will never be abandoned. I happen to like it. That said as frustrating as this "filler" chapter may seem it really is important and had been planned from the beginning. Next chapter hopefully will be up soon and the boys will be back, and Sherlock will get some home truths mwahahahahahahaha! ahem... on with the show.

P.S If you had not noticed, i am an American and have never been to England so i will likely get a lot wrong, in the little things so... sorry : )

I don't own Sherlock, I'm not that rich.

* * *

Interlude 1

John Watson would have been surprised to know that apart from his sister Harry there were, in fact, two people in England that knew where he was and generally what he was doing.

He would have been equally surprised as to how much they cared about his absence.

Because regardless of what John may have thought, his absence was still felt and mourned despite him having disappeared nearly three years before.

Sally Donavan did not consider herself to be a particularly good person. She understood her own character and tried to accept all of the flaws she found. She really did.

She knew that she became involved with married men because she enjoyed the tension that it caused. She enjoyed the hiding, the subterfuge, the constant worry that they might get caught out by the man of the moment's wife.

The fact that these games got her the physical attention she craved while protecting her heart from the possibility of breakage was just a bonus.

Sally also acknowledged that she had a petty streak a mile wide. She wasn't and had never been the best at anything that she had tried; and she resented it. She disliked and ridiculed her nerdy classmates that did better than she did in school. She was subtly rude to her colleagues that were more talented at their police work than she was. She had absolutely despised Sherlock Holmes, who constantly upstaged her.

While in school Sally had spent an inordinate amount of time studying. She had spent so much time with her nose in her books that she should have been at the top of all of her classes. She poured all of her time and effort into her class projects and gave her studies everything that she had.

But it was never enough.

There was always someone who scored higher than she did. And it was always some damn nerd that didn't even try. It was galling that she could give one hundred percent in her classes and barely scrape an "A-" when others gave almost nothing, often times rarely even showed up for classes, and still smugly set the bloody grade curve. It was the story of Sally's life that so called "geniuses" would condescendingly sweep in and steal what should have been _her _accomplishments.

It was even more difficult at work.

Not only did she have to put up with chauvinistic men that didn't approve of women working in the police field, but she had to do it while not ever showing how their words, their cruel slights against her sex, hurt her. She had to do twice as much work, work twice as hard as anybody else, just to get half of the acknowledgement her colleagues achieved for just showing up and being male.

It wasn't fair.

Then there was Sherlock Holmes. The physical embodiment of everything Sally Donavan hated.

He was beautiful. He was brilliant. He was cold as an ice statue and just as perfect.

But the worst… the absolute worst was that Sherlock Holmes could wander into any crime scene that he fancied and do Sally's job for her without so much as a quirk of his eyebrow.

It was an insult to everything Sally had worked so hard for. It was an insult to her studies, it was an insult to her efforts, and it was an insult to all of Sally's hopes and dreams. Sherlock Holmes, who hadn't even graduated from Uni. could do anything and everything Sally, who had worked so very hard, just never seemed to manage. He was the best at nearly everything he did.

He was an honest to god genius.

How Sally _hated_ geniuses.

Which is why she had wanted to believe Sherlock was a fraud. It was a balm to her spirit to believe Sherlock Holmes was really just a hopped up self important ex-junkie that didn't deserve all of the attention he garnered.

It was so wonderful to be able to look at him and laugh as the world figured out that he was a fake.

For a while she had even been able to convince herself that it was true. She had been able to believe that there was no way someone could look at a crime scene and know so much so quickly without being involved in the crime committed.

And then the bloody bastard had thrown himself off of a roof.

Suicide was never funny, not even when you hate the person who died.

Why would someone as narcissistic as Sherlock Holmes kill themselves? There had to be a compelling reason. The man was a psychopath… or at least a sociopath. Didn't that mean he shouldn't have had enough emotion to sink deep enough into despair that killing himself seemed to be the only answer? Didn't that mean that the man should have been incapable of being in so much pain that any way out would be acceptable, the more permanent the better?

Because Holmes' death hadn't been an impulsive action. He hadn't slit his wrists while in the shower, or used the gun everybody pretended John Watson didn't own. He had thought out each step, gone to a roof that was high enough to kill him, called his only friend to say goodbye, and jumped.

Sally may not be a _genius_ but she was smart enough to know that he had gone though to many steps for it to have happened due to a fleeting impulse.

Which begged the question of how often the man had contemplated killing himself before he had actually done it.

Looking back Sally couldn't actually say she had noted any signs of depression in the man. But then she hadn't really looked either. She had been so busy thinking up the next insult to really take in much of anything about him.

She had always been insulting him. She remembered plainly trying to drive away the first friend that Sherlock had ever brought around. John Watson may have stayed but it was very much in spite of Sally's attempts to make him leave.

Had Sally's words and actions helped push Holmes over the proverbial ledge?

It was an uncomfortable thought.

Because that would mean that Sherlock wasn't what she thought he was, it would mean that Sherlock was just as human as everybody else; and Sally was sick of being wrong.

Unfortunately there was evidence to support the truth of Sherlock's humanity. You really didn't have to look any further than his flat mate John Watson to know there was more going on than anybody could see.

John Watson was most defiantly and absolutely human, there was no question about it. He was the type of man people trust, the kind of person that parents want their children to emulate. He cared for others enough to become a doctor, and he was brave enough to go to war with his eyes wide open. Even Sally genuinely liked the clearly hard working and affable man; which is why she could never understand why he spent so much time with the freak; she could never understand how someone as clearly good as John could fall in love with someone so clearly…not.

Because everybody but Sherlock knew that John was in love with him.

It was nearly a year after Sherlock had died that Sally admitted to herself that maybe Sherlock Holmes wasn't as bad as she had made him out to be. It was nearly two before she admitted that she had just been too damn jealous of the man to see that he was more than he had tried to present to others. He had to have been; John lived with the man and had loved him anyway. There had to be something there that Sally just couldn't see or Watson would not have been so utterly devastated when he had died.

When Sally had heard that there was a missing persons report out for him she knew that one of two things must have happened: either one of the freak's enemies had found him and disposed of him or he had committed suicide. Deep down she was leaning towards the latter.

Sally had only seen John once after Sherlock's funeral and it haunted her for weeks. She had been at the market to stock up her herb rack when she had seen him. He had been staring blandly at the milk display like it had personally offended him. But it was his eyes that had shaken her. She had seen eyes just like his plenty of times before.

Staring at her from the faces of the dead.

So yes, she was convinced that he had offed himself and that it was only a matter of time before they found the body. It really was a shame; John Watson had been a good man.

She found out differently entirely by accident a year and a half after his disappearance.

Sally had been at one of her sister's dinner parties up near Kent and they were going around the table discussing the new developments in their lives. It had been a bit of a party because Reggie, Sally's sister's husband's older brother, had come home temporarily from South Africa where he had been stationed working for Doctors Without Borders.

Reggie had been passing around pictures and telling some story about one of the children he had worked with when it happened. Sally was looking at a group photo showing Reggie and several other doctors gathered proudly around a group of some of the darkest skinned children Sally had ever seen when she noticed him, the missing John Watson, standing on the left and smiling down at a earnestly speaking child. His fair skin may have been baked golden, and his blond hair may have been longer and bleached nearly platinum white by the hot African sun but it was clearly and most definitely him.

Reggie had begged her not to say anything. But it wasn't her promise to him that kept her mouth shut, it was the look in John's eyes even so long and so far away from Sherlock bloody Holmes that sealed he lips. The sadness in his eyes lingering there despite the happy genuine smile he was sharing with his patient proved that John needed whatever it was he was getting so far from home. Sally may not have understood why he left the way he had but she thought that she could understand his motives for staying gone.

So she said nothing to her boss the next day, even though he was clearly distressed even now by his friend's disappearance. And she said nothing to Holmes' creepy brother's men when they came around the precinct, for what must have been the millionth time, to question people in hopes of finding a new lead on the doctor.

And when the freak came back she still said nothing, no matter how distressed he looked, because Sherlock Holmes didn't deserve someone like John Watson in his life. Not if this was how he would treat him, with lies and heartbreak.

Sally knew she wasn't a particularly good person, but she knew right from wrong. She knew that the way Sherlock treated John was entirely unacceptable, and it was her professional duty to make certain people didn't get hurt if she could help it, and John was clearly better off without Sherlock.

* * *

The other person who knew and cared was a beautiful elderly woman. Unbeknownst to John she was the reason that Mycroft had never tracked him down. She was the reason that all paperwork for John Hamish Watson had vanished from the DWB database entirely. She was John's greatest ally, not that they had ever met. And they wouldn't until she was ready for it to happen.

This delicate seventy three year old woman was probably the most powerful person in England. What else could be said about someone who could bring both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes to heel at a word? Of someone who could bend them, control them, and turn them into anything she wanted on a whim?

Not that would. She loved them far too much for that.

However it was very much her job and prerogative to teach them a little… lesson… occasionally.

She would teach them what happens when you mistreat the gifts god sends you.

For that to happen John Watson had to stay missing.

Hopefully he would be able to protect himself until the time was right.

Everything would work out.

Mummy Holmes wouldn't allow it to go any other way.


End file.
